Home Being The New York Times: the Political Behaviour of a Newspaper
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Being The New York Times: the Political Behaviour of a Newspaper

  • Riccardo Puglisi
Published/Copyright: April 11, 2011

Abstract

I analyse a dataset of news from The New York Times, from 1946 to 1997. Controlling for the activity of the incumbent president and the U.S. Congress across issues, I find that during a presidential campaign, The New York Times gives more emphasis to topics on which the Democratic party is perceived as more competent (civil rights, health care, labor and social welfare) when the incumbent president is a Republican. This is consistent with the hypothesis that The New York Times has a Democratic partisanship, with some “anti-incumbent” aspects, in that—during a presidential campaign—it gives more emphasis to issues over which the (Republican) incumbent is weak. To the extent that the interest of readers across issues is not systematically related with the political affiliation of the incumbent president and the election cycle, the observed changes in news coverage are consistent with The New York Times departing from demand-driven news coverage. In fact, I show that these findings are robust to controlling for Gallup data on the most important problem facing the country, which I use as a proxy for issue tastes of Times’ readers.

Published Online: 2011-4-11

©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Advances Article
  2. Does One Charitable Contribution Come at the Expense of Another?
  3. Racial Disparities in Credit Constraints in the Great Recession: Evidence from the UK
  4. The Progressivity of Social Security
  5. Contributions Article
  6. Bertrand Competition in Markets with Network Effects and Switching Costs
  7. Demanding Customers: Consumerist Patients and Quality of Care
  8. The Impact of Class Size on Outcomes in Higher Education
  9. Estimating Dynamic Income Responses to Tax Reform
  10. Economic Decision-Making in Poverty Depletes Behavioral Control
  11. Are Entry Threats Always Credible?
  12. Why Don't Taxpayers Maximize their Tax-Based Student Aid? Salience and Inertia in Program Selection
  13. Medicaid and Ethnic Networks
  14. The Influence of Firms on Government
  15. Do Rising Top Incomes Lift All Boats?
  16. Income Distribution, Search and Market Efficiency
  17. Free Trade, Autarky and the Sustainability of an International Environmental Agreement
  18. Sourcing Premia with Incomplete Contracts: Theory and Evidence
  19. Electoral Endorsements and Campaign Contributions
  20. Competition and Performance in the Marketplace for Religion: A Theoretical Perspective
  21. Unitization of Spatially Connected Renewable Resources
  22. Market Provision of Program Quality in the Television Broadcasting Industry
  23. Being The New York Times: the Political Behaviour of a Newspaper
  24. The Market Crash and Mass Layoffs: How the Current Economic Crisis May Affect Retirement
  25. Comparative Advantage and Skill-Specific Unemployment
  26. The Labor Supply Consequences of Employment-Limiting Social Insurance Benefits: New Tests for Income Effects
  27. Rent Control Rationing and Community Composition: Evidence from Massachusetts
  28. Ordering Renewable Resources: Groundwater, Recycling, and Desalination
  29. The Wage Impact of Immigration in Germany - New Evidence for Skill Groups and Occupations
  30. Linking Policy to Statistical Uncertainty in Air Pollution Damages
  31. A Deadly Disparity: A Unified Assessment of the Black-White Infant Mortality Gap
  32. Immigration, Family Responsibilities and the Labor Supply of Skilled Native Women
  33. Distress in the Financial Sector and Economic Activity
  34. Fiscal Reforms in General Equilibrium: Theory and an Application to the Subsidy Debate in Iran
  35. Technology Licensing by Advertising Supported Media Platforms: An Application to Internet Search Engines
  36. Does a Minimum Quality Standard Always Reduce the Price of High Quality Products?
  37. Private Schools and Residential Choices: Accessibility, Mobility, and Welfare
  38. Probabilistic Heterogeneous Patent Protection and Innovation Incentives
  39. Anticommons and Optimal Patent Policy in a Model of Sequential Innovation
  40. An Economic Analysis of Participation and Time Spent in Physical Activity
  41. The Fragility of Estimated Effects of Unilateral Divorce Laws on Divorce Rates
  42. When Does Institutional Investor Activism Increase Shareholder Value?: The Carbon Disclosure Project
  43. Behavioral Response to Stock Abundance in Exploiting Common-Pool Resources
  44. Group Decision-Making and Voting in Ultimatum Bargaining: An Experimental Study
  45. Booms, Busts, and Divorce
  46. Product Market Competition and Investments in Cooperative R&D
  47. Topics Article
  48. Oligopoly on a Salop Circle with Centre
  49. Can Rising Inequality Explain Aggregate Trends in Marriage? Evidence from U.S. States, 1977-2005
  50. On the Importance of the Tax System in Marginal Cost of Funds Calculations
  51. Job Search, Conditional Treatment and Recidivism: The Employment Services for Ex-Offenders Program Reconsidered
  52. Will Border Carbon Adjustments Work?
  53. Determinants of the Differences in the Downstream Vertical Integration and Efficiency Implications in Agricultural Cooperatives
  54. Tax Policy to Reduce Carbon Emissions in a Distorted Economy: Illustrations from a South Africa CGE Model
  55. Training and Turnover with Equilibrium Unemployment
  56. Advertising Versus Sales in Demand Creation
  57. Competition and Welfare Effects of VAT Exemptions
  58. Factor Demand Analysis for Ethanol in the U.S. Refinery Industry
  59. Small Fish Become Big Fish: Mergers in Stackelberg Markets Revisited
  60. French Automobiles and the Chinese Boycotts of 2008: Politics Really Does Affect Commerce
  61. A Tail-Payoff Puzzle in Dynamic Pollution Control
  62. Men in Transit and Prostitution: Using Political Conventions as a Natural Experiment
  63. Identifying In-Group and Out-Group Effects in the Trust Game
  64. Does Product Market Competition Increase Credit Availability?
  65. Growth and Innovation Policy in a Small, Open Economy: Should You Stimulate Domestic R&D or Exports?
  66. Public Policies, Women's Employment after Childbearing, and Child Well-Being
  67. Decomposing the Relationship between Macroeconomic Conditions and Fatal Car Crashes during the Great Recession: Alcohol- and Non-Alcohol-Related Accidents
  68. The Effect of Minimum Academic Requirements to Participate in Sports on High School Graduation
  69. Exclusive Contracts under Financial Constraints
  70. The Impact of Antitrust Fines on the Formation of Collusive Cartels
  71. The Happiness of Single Mothers after Welfare Reform
  72. Labor Market Effects of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
  73. How Do Editors Select Papers, and How Good are They at Doing It?
  74. Overestimating the Effect of Complementarity on Skill Demand
  75. Natural Disasters and Vulnerability: Evidence from the 1997 Forest Fires in Indonesia
  76. Measuring the Impact of Anti-SLAPP Legislation on Monitoring and Enforcement
  77. Ambiguity Aversion and Portfolio Choice in Small-Scale Peruvian Farming
  78. Medicaid and Wealth: A Re-Examination
  79. Empirical Analyses of U.S. Congressional Voting on Recent FTA
  80. The Economics of the Long Tail
Downloaded on 27.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.2202/1935-1682.2025/html
Scroll to top button